Workplace Stressors

Workplace Stressors

Stress related diseases are widespread among the western world. It has

been estimated that half of all doctors visits are due to stress

related illness. Karasek suggests that the most stressful job are

those that invlove low control and high demand. Karasek defines job

demands as "the psychological stressors involved in accomplishing the

workload." He uses the expression decision latitude to describe the

degree of control in the workplace. Decision latitude is "the working

individual's potential control over his tasks and his conduct during

the working day."

Karasek has conducted several studies that support the idea that the

most stressful combination of workload involves low control and high

demand.

Johnson and hull studied 13,000 workers to show how the combination of

job demands, control, and social support from co-workers related to

the prevalence of cardiovascular disease. They found that jobs with

high demands, low control and low social support had twice the risk

for this disease compared with jobs which had low demands, high

control and high social support.

The most obvious cause of stress is sheer overload- a situation in

which there is too much to do in the time given. Individuals in this

situation are given three choices:- do less work then required, do

work not as good or take more time than they have been given.

Sales found that in this situation people feel they have to complete

the work in the given time limits, and see the situation as a conflict

between quantity and quality - eirther they do some of the job

properly (so quantity fails) or they do all the job not very well

(quality fails).

People seem to underestimate the amount of overload they have been

given, and see it as their own fault they cannot do the job well,

therefore increasing the amount of stress.

Working long hours is another obvious cause of stress, but not so

obvious is having too little work to do, this has been estimated to be

one of the most serious causes of stress at work because where there